Archive for the ‘Republicans’ Tag
You’re Missing Something Here
A little late to the game, but I’m from NJ. Both of these fawning profiles miss a crucial point: Christie messed up some paperwork, costing NJ schools $400 million, for no reason whatsoever.
Supply and Demand of Government Resources
Filed under: Economics and Business, United States | Tags: Economics, Republicans
Leave a Comment By systematically underpricing the costs of government resources through tax cuts and deficit spending, Republicans have driven up demand and consumption for those government resources. If taxes were raised to reflect the actual cost of those government services, presumably the demand for those services would decrease. Granted, different services have different levels of price elasticity, so demand changes would not be uniform across the state sector. None the less, I think applying a simple microeconomic model to government services like any other good or service is a useful exercise. In fact, this entire idea underpins Bruce Bartlett’s good attack on Republican “starve-the-beast” ideology.
University Students and the GOP
Filed under: The Culture | Tags: Republicans, Students, The Young
Leave a Comment David Frum has a good post about why the GOP has so much trouble with top university students:
Today’s top students are motivated less by enthusiasm for Democrats and much more by revulsion from Republicans. It’s not the students who have changed so much. It’s the Republicans.
It’s worth reading full. Kevin Drum has a simpler explanation:
Older voters might be willing to accept Republican incoherence simply because it’s in their interest to do so and they don’t really care if the arguments make sense, but younger voters don’t have that same motivation. Republican magical thinking doesn’t really benefit them, so they’re just repelled by it.
It’s not just that Republican magical thinking doesn’t directly benefit young people in any tangible way. The bigger problem is that, values aside, this magical thinking is so easy to knock down. At universities where a bunch of bright young people are getting into late-night bull sessions by night and reading academic literature by day, these arguments have no chance of gaining traction. They fall down under any empirical attack. I don’t think politicians need to go around saying the most intellectually daring arguments out there, but they should have some substance behind them. Republicans increasingly rely on glass house arguments. Ambitious kids who think they know much more than they do are going to throw rocks. It would take someone with a lot fortitude to constantly want to play that sort of defense with your peer group.
Increasingly in my life, I simply end conversations when they veer into Republican fantasyland. I’m not going to argue about whether the Bush tax cuts added to the deficit or not. Either you base arguments on widely accepted factual premises or you don’t.
All Buildings Must be Segway Compliant!
Filed under: United States | Tags: Bicycles, Crazy People, Republicans
Leave a Comment Fred Barnes writes a typical conservative column decrying non-auto transportation without mentioning how the state subsidizes automobile transportation in a myriad of ways. Then there’s this at the end:
In his tabletop speech, LaHood said he and his wife take their bikes to the path along the C&O Canal and “ride as far as we possibly can.” That’s nice. But it’s interesting, and perhaps telling, that the canal, as a major mode of transportation, has been obsolete since the 1880s—a lot like bicycling and walking.
Walking is obsolete? And it’s been obsolete from the late 19th century?
Reveal and Re-educate
Ron Johnson, the Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin who is ahead in the polls, is committing himself to the “re-education of America.” Sounds eerily like brainwashing, but there’s more:
[H]e watches his words, ignoring the fact that he’s already making the trade-offs conventional politicians make to win office. It will be different once and if he wins, he promises. Then, his true feelings can take voice. (emphasis added)
I’m sure once he reveals his true feelings, and re-educates us, I’ll realize the evil ways of liberalism, and why rich people’s lives are so hard and need more money.
Why Stop There?
West Virginia Senate Candidate believes we need 1000 lasers to shoot down rogue missiles. “We need 1,000 laser systems put in the sky and we need it right now.” I propose we develop an even superior defense mechanism, that will not only destroy any rogue missile, but also take out all the terrorists, too:
Political Malpractice, A Definition
Allowing the opposing political party to intimidate and suppress voters that form one of your bases, and then allow the opposing party to gin up pseudo-controversies over voter fraud:
Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk caught on tape discussing his plan to send “voter integrity” squads to four predominantly African-American Chicago neighborhoods on election day. Kirk calls them “vulnerable precincts … where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat.”
Democrats appear, as always, to allow the GOP to suppress minority voters.
Politics as Reality TV
Filed under: United States | Tags: Democrats, Jersey Shore, Republicans, We Are Doomed
Leave a Comment A new, exciting way to think about the world!
The Democratic Party is boring. And its women are either old or unattractive.
This is not a superficial problem in a country that has embraced superficiality. The Republicans, left for dead, are on the verge of taking back power because they of what they learned from Sarah Palin in 2008: that the values Americans care about are not family, but entertainment. Sure, it’s the party of no; it’s also the party of fun. Remember when the GOP was trying to counter Obama with its skinny-necked “serious” candidates, like Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty? It was mocked for its trouble. Now the Republican Party has not so much remade itself as remarketed itself, its familiar cast of corporate shills learning to speak the language of populist outrage from the Tea Party, and its Tea Partiers rallying behind women attractive enough to allow them to forget their own grotesqueries.
Christine O’Donnell, like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann and Nikki Haley before her, might not be the most beautiful woman in the world, but she has enough sex appeal for a turn on Dancing with the Stars, or for a contract with the Fox News mothership, or for a few contentious seasons on the Real Housewives of the Republican Party, if such a show ever existed, and if O’Donnell ever married or raised a family. The reality-television baseline is becoming the standard of beauty in this country: If you can say really crazy things or lead a really crazy life and become a star, well, then you must be beautiful. The Republicans have cornered the market on beauty because they’ve cornered the market on crazy, and if they’ve failed to produce a “candidate” in Delaware, they’ve succeeded in producing a star, and have made all the tut-tutting pundits look as behind the times as the newspapers they serve. Wherever populism reared its head, there used to be sweaty men; now — in country music, at Fox, and in crossover “Islamaphobe” bloggers who get their picture pasted on the Sunday Times — there are at least semi-sexy women.
The Democrats didn’t think they had to worry about any of this. They weren’t looking for stars because they had the biggest star in the world as their president. He didn’t have a populist bone in his body, but he was a deeply thoughtful man and a galvanic speaker both, and he promised to transcend the bone-grind of American politics. With his promise of one-man racial reconciliation, he was transfixing, but the independents who were transfixed by him needed to keep being transfixed, and on this, he couldn’t deliver. The American public turned against Obama not when it found out he was radical, or wish-washy, or power-mad, or timid, or what have you; it turned against him when he stopped being entertaining. It turned against him when it found out his real secret — that under his professorial mien he was, well, a professor. Outside the enforced electricity of a national electoral referendum, he was dutiful, and he was dull.
Epistemic Closure’s Literary Potential
Filed under: United States | Tags: Chickens!, Epistemic Closure, Literature, Republicans, Sarah Palin
Leave a Comment Julian Sanchez’s theory of “epistemic closure” occurring on the American right has attracted considerable attention on the intertubes. (See here, here, here, and even here.) The dangers of a having a political party completely detached from reality aside, I think this is a golden opportunity for some intrepid fiction writers to mine the current political climate for some real insights into human behavior and how we construct (or don’t construct) human experience. Reality is quickly outpacing fiction on the believable scale, and we have a group of people who are trying to willfully construct their own version of history, the economy, and current government policies. We should barter with chickens for health care! More seriously, the incoherence takes on various hues of irony in the historical context:
[Palin]’s been going around to Tea Party rallies, invoking the spirit of revolutionary Boston and castigating Obama for failing to exalt American power and punish our adversaries. She seems blissfully unaware that the imperial arrogance she’s preaching isn’t how the American founders behaved. It’s how the British behaved, and why they lost. Palin represents everything the original Tea Party was against.
The best we can hope for is future great reading from this nonsense.
